The article discusses the issue of proper names defined as symptoms of culture. The first part is of a theoretical character and develops the theory of symptomatology of culture in the context of semiotics (Ch. Peirce), psychology and psychoanalysis (S. Freud and J. Lacan), and onomastics. Symptomatology of culture is a practice of interpreting a certain group of texts of culture and extracting common qualitative traits within them. This is especially in the case of those traits specific to them and often encountered, which could testify to particular serious and deeply-rooted social phenomena leading to their appearance. In the empirical part the author presents a way of using (onymic) symptomatology in practice to research modern culture. She uses the examples of popular psychological and auto-therapeutic guidebooks and treats them as linguistic symptomatic forms of the most significant linguistic and cultural phenomena along with their social causes and functions which are often dysfunctional or abnormal in character. The analysis comprises the most typical conceptual and syntactic constructions encountered in the group.
The article tackles issues of the pedagogy of place, with a special emphasis on the urban context. On the basis of fundamental theses asserting that a city is a text (Vladimir Toporov) and that places are pedagogical (Maria Mendel) – the author concentrates on symbols. Definition of this concept, as well as de3 nitions of its particular exemplifications, create a theoretical basis for further practical considerations. Presenting methodology of a research project Reading the City (Czytanie miasta) conducted in the years 2015–2016, the author creates new research challenges for pedagogues. Presentation of wide variety of city symbolism, encompassing both cultural manifestations (towers, bridges) and a realm of nature (mountains, river), leads to proposed educational applications. Descriptions of realized animations based on research form a summary of this article.
For several decades of the last century, semiotic arrangements enriched the sociology of culture. The aim of the article is to show the achievements of the empirical school of sociology of culture in the perspective of the significant semiotic issues on the example of selectively selected works of the eminent scientist Antonina Kłoskowska and the “Łódź school” which she created. Thanks to Antonina Kłoskowska, the empirical way of the “Łódź school” sociology of culture led from literature reception research to visual arts research. Her students made a significant contribution to Polish sociology of art, sociology of literature, sociology of film, sociology of theater, and visual sociology. The text attempts to sketch semiotic theoretical inspirations, a characteristic theoretical and methodological approach to the study of symbolic culture. The problems of research on the reception of works were described in the context of selected studies on film reception. The starting point was the empirical research of Antonina Kłoskowska regarding the reception of the screening of the Wedding (dir. A. Wajda, 1973).
The article consists of two parts. In the first one (introductory) I recall—following Edmund Husserl, Stanisław Ossowski and Adam Schaff—the main formulations of the “principle of transparency of the sign.” In these formulations it is usually said about (1) the transparency of the sign regarding objects denoted by the sign (denoted, designated and/or named), or (2) the transparency of the sign regarding its meaning (respectively, events, states of affairs and facts designated by the sign). However, as Husserl pointed out, one can also speak about (3) the transparency of the sign in relations to the activities and mental states of the sign’s users (senders and recipients). After all, only due to the transparency of the sign understood in this way, it is possible for people to communicate with each other, thus the sign can also has an expressive and communicative function. In turn, the second part of the article (essential) contains a reconstruction of the Leon Koj’s approach; Koj gave a consistently formalized form to the theory of sign based on the principle of transparency— the form of an axiomatized logical system (using Quine's formalism from his Mathematical Logic). One of Koj's main goals was also to indicate the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and even the primacy of pragmatics over semantics. Formal-logical tools have also shown that the theory of sign based on the principle of transparency neither contravene The Law of Non-Contradiction (at least in its psychological formulation), nor contain or imply semantic antinomies such us antinomy of the liar. Because it is a theory easily negotiable with Alfred Tarski’s theory of language levels.